


For Better or For Worse: Scars Burn

by DeadlyBingo



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), olicity - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, but not terrible, just a little angstyness, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 02:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8426995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadlyBingo/pseuds/DeadlyBingo
Summary: Prompted by a conversation with the new recruits, Oliver and Felicity delve into their past, even though they’re not sure they’re entirely ready for what it brings up.





	

“Well that could have gone better,” Evelyn laughed, landing a playful punch on Rene’s arm as they stepped out of the elevator to find Felicity still at her computer. “Maybe we should have asked Rory and Curtis to tag along on this mission?”

“We were _fine_. It coulda gone a lot worse, too,” Rene shrugged, tossing his mask haphazardly into its illuminated case before moving to carefully put his guns away. “We’re still alive, right? And we caught the guy? Sounds like a big win to me.”

Evelyn put away her bow as she groaned, “We got locked in a meat locker, Rene! We would _still_ be there freezing our asses off if Oliver hadn’t been hovering around and _waiting_ for us to screw up!” Evelyn turned to Felicity, her voice immediately more relaxed, “Oliver already beat us back here, I assume?”

“Yup,” Felicity confirmed. “A negative to the whole bringing his motorcycle on missions thing; he always leaves the new kids with the clean up.” Felicity smiled, lowering her voice. “I keep telling him we should get the team a _minivan_ so everyone can ride together but he’s just not ready to take that step.  It could have TVs in the back so you guys can review footage or watch a cartoon on the way home!”

Rene snorted. “I can’t imagine _him_ ever ready to take that kind of step.”

“Why not?” Evelyn replied. “He and Felicity almost got married last year. I bet he had a secret pot roast recipe and everything.”

“No recipes were secret with Oliver,” Felicity offered before she could think any better. “He shares them with _everyone_. Even when they don’t ask.”

“Wait? You’re tellin’ me these two actually _dated_?!” Rene’s tone hovered somewhere between shock and utter glee at his discovery. “It all makes so much more sense now!”

Evelyn rolled her eyes as she carefully replaced her mask on the mannequin. “Last year you couldn’t turn on the local news without an update on their relationship. People on the internet were in _tears_ when they broke up! Were you really _that_ oblivious? Did you also have no idea Felicity was the CEO at Palmer Tech for a while?”

“Duh,” Rene shrugged before closing the case containing his own disguise. “I just figured bringing that whole gettin canned thing up would open old wounds and all that.”

“And bringing up their _relationship_ wouldn’t?” Evelyn almost laughed before her eyes caught Felicity’s and her tone suddenly shifted. “Well… now that we’ve made this sufficiently awkward… how about we head home? Want to split an Uber?”

Felicity jumped in, turning in her chair to face Rene and Evelyn across the room. “It’s- it’s fine. It’s okay.  As you said, all of it’s old news by this point. Water under the bridge and all that jazz.”  

But despite her best intentions, Felicity immediately regretted her assurances. She could already feel old wounds tearing themselves back open and seeping pain back into her life. She had only said that bringing up her old relationship was okay as a way to convince _herself_ that it was. There was only so long a person could refuse to talk about a breakup they claimed to be over.

“See, it’s fine,” Rene bragged, climbing the steps onto the platform. “I wanna hear more about this relationship. I can’t picture Oliver playing the whole devoted boyfriend, living the happily ever after with a white picket fence role. That why it ended? He couldn’t get out of angry vigilante mode?”

“Rene... “ Evelyn warned, clearly still nervous as she followed him into the center of the room.

“Nah, I’m just asking! Plus, they both seem fine, so I gotta assume they’ve moved on and all that. So, tell me, Blondie, why’d you leave him? I assume it was you that left him since he’d never be dumb enough to let someone as great as you go.”

It was then, with his usual impeccable timing, that Oliver emerged from the locker room, running a small towel over his damp hair. “Don’t call her Blondie,” Oliver warned Rene, before catching Felicity’s eye and adding gruffly, “And of course it was my fault. Any google search would tell you that much.”

Rene’s bravado seemed to falter as Oliver entered the room, but he pushed forward anyway. “So, you two just not work out?” He paused before quickly adding, “Not that you gotta answer, I just figure the whole being open with each other thing applies to _all_ of us, not just the newbies.”

“It doesn’t affect the team,” Oliver answered shortly, approaching Evelyn and inspecting a cut on her cheek before turning to face Rene again. “But you could say that. We just… didn’t work out.”

“Oliver, play nice,” Felicity warned. “He was just asking questions. _I_ said it was okay.”

Oliver’s mouth drew into a thin line as he passed Rene and Evelyn without another word.  Instead, he leaned over to examine Felicity’s desktop before announcing definitively, “You guys can go home. We’re _done_ for tonight.”

“Sooo… how about that Uber?” Evelyn repeated, slapping Rene’s arm with the back of her hand before sending Felicity an apologetic smile.

“Yeah, Uber. I don’t need that gossip anyway.” Rene followed Evelyn to the elevator before turning back with a final for a final jab to help save his pride. “Well, good thing for us it’s over now. God knows we wouldn’t want to walk in on that bare, old ass one night.”

Felicity knew something was wrong the second Oliver didn’t reply to Rene’s quip. Instead, she and Oliver sat in a deafening silence as they listened to the sound of the ascending elevator to fade away.  Felicity considered making small talk about the mission, but despite her normal propensity for chatting, she couldn’t find the right words. She was about to ask about the weather when Oliver spoke up.

“So, apparently _that’s_ a new conversation topic in the bunker?” Oliver said, his eyes still trained on the elevator doors.

“It just… it just came up? I figured we weren’t trying to keep it a secret. I’m sorry.”

“You have no reason to be sorry, Felicity.  Like you said, it’s _not_ a secret.”

Though Oliver was _saying_ Felicity had no reason to be sorry, everything in his hurt tone told her she did.  She just wasn’t sure _why_. Was he still uncomfortable with his new team? Was he still upset about their fight about breaking John out of prison? Had she unconsciously done something else wrong that she was just completely oblivious to?  She wouldn’t put it past herself...

Luckily, or unluckily, she didn’t have to wait long before Oliver spoke up again. Rushing through his words as if he were afraid to lose his nerve. “Why you can talk to people you met a few _months_ ago about our breakup, but _we_ aren’t allowed to talk about it?”

“We _did_ talk-”

“No, Felicity, you talked. I listened. _We_ never talked.”

Felicity ran a hand through her hair. Oliver had had _months_ to be upset about this. Why was this just coming up now?

“Since when do you _want_ to talk?” she ventured.

“To you?” Oliver paused. “I could _always_ talk to you. It’s what made us so… different from my other relationships. I mean, from how I am with everyone else I know.”

Felicity held back a scoff. There had been a _few_ big secrets in there that she had wished he had talked to her about.  But, to be fair, she hadn’t always been an open book either.  Most of the time she could be just as closed off as Oliver. And she knew she couldn’t put all of the blame on him.  Enough restless nights over the past few months had brought her to that realization. Maybe he had been having them too? Why wouldn’t he be?

“What if I hadn’t interrupted?” Oliver pressed. “What would you have said to them? Why would you tell them it ended between us?”

“I don’t know…” Felicity admitted. “Maybe just that we tried but it ended? That sometimes being _insanely_ happy just isn’t enough. That love by itself doesn’t solve problems.”

Oliver paused for a moment, his eyes darting around the bunker before replying, his voice suddenly irritated, “We were _too_ happy? That’s why you didn’t… that that’s why you think we _broke up_?”

She had said the wrong thing.   _Of course_ she did. Why would she ever say the right thing at the right time? “Oliver, I obviously didn’t mean it _that way_. We shouldn’t get into this right now-”

“Then when, Felicity?” Oliver clutched his fists at his side, heat rising in his neck as his voice grew louder.

“Not. Now.” Anxiety built in Felicity’s chest. She wasn’t ready for this conversation.  She wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for this conversation.

“I know I screwed up.  Damn it, I _know_ I did.” Panic edged into Oliver’s frustrated tone as he continued, “But don’t I deserve an answer, _Felicity_? How am I supposed to move on when I’m constantly trying to figure out where I went wrong?”

It wasn’t that Oliver didn’t deserve to know what she was thinking.  It was just that Felicity didn’t know how to tell him without crossing all the lines she wouldn’t know how to come back from.

“I lost my son _and_ you in the _same_ day.” Oliver began to pace across the platform. “I’ve tried to play the good soldier but _damn it_ I’m tired. Just talk me through _whatever_ your reasoning is because I’ve spent months trying to follow your logic and I just _can’t_. Whatever I’m clearly too _dumb_ to figure out!”

“I _didn’t_ say you were dumb.” Despite being the middle of an open room, Felicity felt backed into a corner. Oliver had clearly already lived out this argument in his mind and she wasn’t sure there was any way for her to win.

“You didn’t have to say it! If you thought I could handle it you would have already told me instead of waiting to tell the new recruits! Hell, I assume _Curtis_ already knows more about this than I do.”

No. That’s where Felicity drew the line.  He would not criticize her for opening up to someone else. She would _not_ feel guilty for that too.

“You want to know where it went wrong, Oliver? It’s that we were _only_ happy!” Felicity struggled to keep her voice low, but it was difficult when she was convinced that Oliver _must_ have realized these problems by now. How could he not? “Being happy was our _priority_. We glossed over _anything_ that didn’t work.  Ivy Town, our lives there, were practically _pretend_! Even when we moved back to Star City we barely attempted to address anything that wasn’t _happy_. We were just going to continue to be blissfully unaware, be together, despite _everything_ else that came up, despite everything that was _against_ us.  It was _stupid_ of us not to acknowledge those things!  We built a life based on a fairytale and didn’t adjust it when we were thrown back into this crazy _reality_! It was never going to work! Not when we refused face that love, on its own, isn’t _enough_!”

As Felicity spat out her last word she immediately regretted her tone.  Oliver was right, he did deserve this explanation.  But he didn’t deserve a fight.

Oliver pressed his lips together, turning away and talking a few carefully measured steps before walking back to Felicity. “Why didn’t you _warn_ me?” Betrayal shadowed his words. “We could have done something? We could have _tried_ to change our…”

Felicity reached her hand out to interrupt Oliver but she pulled back before touching him. He stopped talking anyway, his eyes following her fingers.

“I didn’t know myself Oliver… I was _convinced_ , like any girl raised on Disney movies, that love conquers all. And after I fell in love with you… well it really seemed like it could. I figured we were putting so much work into everything else in our lives so we shouldn’t have to put it into _us_. We were just supposed to- to _fit_ together automatically. It wasn’t until after…” Felicity took a shaky breath and looked down to her hands, unwilling to admit, even to herself, that they yearned for the comfort of his. “It wasn’t until after William that I realized what we had done. That we had backed ourselves into an impossible corner.”

“But I-” Oliver stuttered, pain replacing the earlier anger in his voice.  But Felicity pushed on.  If he wanted this conversation, they were having it now.  Felicity was smart enough to know that more unsaid words between her would only end badly.

“Oliver, yes, one reason you didn’t tell me about your son was because Samantha told you not to.  But _you_ also didn’t want to ruin our fairytale, or whatever we were living in. I mean, not that William would ruin our fairytale, you _know_ I would have wanted to meet him, that I would have done anything to be part of his life. But you also didn’t want potential fallout with Samantha to taint _our_ lives, to hurt _us_ because everything was going so well. You thought you could fix everything on your own, make it great, before you risked our relationship. Maybe if things hadn’t been so perfect earlier… we wouldn’t have been so afraid to admit our shortcomings…”

Oliver stood quietly, his hands curled at his sides, clearly trying to hide his thoughts. But Felicity knew every nuance of his face by now and she knew she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, at least on some level.

 _“I caused it too, Oliver_ ,” she continued. “I was _convinced_ we could move back to Star City and keep proceeding with that _life_ we had created in Ivy Town.  I figured if we were ready to be engaged there, where everything was so _simple_ , then why not back in Star City? It was _foolish_ of me to push that… even when you suspected we still needed time. It’s not just _wanting_ to get married, Oliver.  It’s being ready.  It’s being aware of the challenges you’re going to face and _still_ saying yes.  We didn’t think about _any_ challenges, Oliver. _We_ didn’t think and now…”

“And now it’s too late… It’s it, Felicity?” Oliver finished for her, raking his hands through his hair.

Somehow the sound of Felicity’s name on Oliver’s lips was still almost enough to make her weak at the knees, though Felicity couldn’t discern if it was due to the memories of him whispering her name in her ear or actual feelings she had buried beneath all of the pain from the last year.

“We _both_ had our reservations at some points.” Felicity bit her lip. “I freaked out about losing my identity, you hesitated to propose, but we neither of us changed _anything_ about how we approached our relationship. We just trusted that everything would be okay and kept pushing forward, assuming things would work themselves out because we were in _love…_ ”

Oliver sighed, running a hand down his tired face.

“Sometimes that happens…” Felicity continued, trying to force some hope into her voice, “but that doesn’t mean we can’t rebuild something _different_. Different doesn’t mean _worse_.  It’s just… different.  And this time we’re going to deal with what we face.  We don’t have a choice.  I’m not willing to lose you completely.”

Oliver walked away suddenly, pacing over to the cases and peering at the disguises as if an answer were hidden behind the mannequins.  When he turned back to Felicity, she could barely hear his voice.

“So… it wasn’t all my fault.” Oliver looked down to his feet.

“No Oliver… you haven’t really been thinking this all this time, have you?”

“What was I supposed to think?”

Felicity sighed.  She didn’t know what she expected.  Of _course_ Oliver blamed himself.  And when she had been angrier, more hurt, she may have even _wanted_ him to.  But somehow she had fooled herself into thinking he had gotten over that. That he too had realized it wasn’t all his fault. They shared the blame.

But she was wrong.  For months, Oliver had been carrying this guilt.  Convincing himself that he was the sole cause of a breakup that changed his life. That changed both of their lives.

“It was both of us Oliver.” Felicity reached out, not hesitating to grab his arm this time.  “And not just us… it was… it was the universe. It just wasn’t our time I guess?”

“Our time?” Oliver’s voice almost sounded hopeful.

“You know what I mean…” Felicity corrected quickly, knowing that she shouldn’t give Oliver false hope. That she couldn’t stand to hurt him _more_ than she already had. She drew her hand away from his arm before adding, “It wasn’t meant to be is all.”

Oliver licked his lips and shoved his own hands deep into his pockets before admitting, “I really thought we’d be back to being _us_ by now.”

Felicity was tempted to ask what he meant, but in reality, she knew exactly where he was coming from.  She had hoped for the same thing. A reset to a time before both of their hearts had been filled just so they could shatter.

“We can’t go back to being _us_. We’ve changed. We’re different people now. For better or for worse.”

A smile flickered across Oliver’s lips, his mind clearly going back to the same moment that Felicity’s did. “Then what do we do now?”

“We move forward.”

“As?”

“As us, whoever that is now. That’s all we can be. We may be a little different than when we started, but I think we’ll still be okay. We have been so far… minus one or two hiccups.”

Oliver swallowed, nodding his head. “I guess I’ll take it. It’s better than the alternative.”

The pair stood alone for a moment, eyes on one another, and Felicity knew this was just one of many moments where things would be different.  Before their relationship she would have blushed, looked away, and spent the rest of the night thinking about the love she’d never have.  During it… well they’d have probably moved into the dormitory room already and done exactly what Rene would be afraid to walk in on. But now… things were different.  Now it was Oliver who gave her a small smile before saying, “I’m actually going to go into the office and get some of my mayoral work done now. I’m sure my desk is covered in folders marked “urgent.” You going to wrap up here?”

Felicity only nodded her confirmation before settling back in at her desk.  She put her hands to the keyboard and waited, for what felt like an hour, for Oliver to leave.

But once he was gone, she let her forehead fall to the cool glass.

Donna had once reassured a teenage Felicity that love usually goes straight to your head. With as little as a single touch it rushes in, forcing laughter to fall from your lips, a spark to light your eyes, optimism to catch in your throat. This love _tricks_ you into thinking its relief will last forever.  But then reality sets in. Your body cools. The love fades. Life goes on. _You’re able to go on._

But Felicity had recently learned that sometimes that love seeps into your very core. It settles in your stomach and spreads to your extremities, binding with your soul and battling to burst from your fingertips.  And it’s not until you feel that love that you know what _true_ contentment is. To know that there is no where else you would rather be and no one else you would rather be with. You know you are _home_. And it feels _perfect_.

Until it isn’t.

And when that love is pulled away, it doesn’t _cool_ , it burns. It scars. It changes you _forever_.

And after falling in love with Oliver, Felicity _was_ changed forever, she had no doubt of that. Both from the experience itself and the agony of the breakup.

Sure, _she_ had been the one to decide to end their relationship, but that didn’t make the pain of losing Oliver any more bearable.  If anything, the combined sprinkling of guilt and temptation to take her words back made the pain even more overwhelming. It was months before the agony subsided to a dull ache, one she could pretend to ignore every time Oliver was in the room with her.

But now, her act was over.  Apparently both of their acts were. And Felicity wasn’t sure what would come next.


End file.
